There are plenty of ways to count your steps in 2026. They nearly all involve a connected smartwatch, a charging cable and a starting price of several hundred quid.
Casio has come up with another option.
The new F-B100W takes the basic formula of the brand’s classic digital watches and adds a handful of features more commonly associated with a high-end fitness tracker: Bluetooth connectivity, automatic time adjustment and, crucially, a built-in step counter.
Casio..
It looks reassuringly retro.
The rectangular resin case, LCD display and four side pushers could have been transferred wholesale from Casio’s back catalogue, and the black version in particular bears an obvious resemblance to the classic F-91W, the £20 digital watch introduced in 1989 that has since become one of Casio’s most recognisable designs, shifting 100m units.
Inside, however, is an accelerometer that counts your steps and displays your progress on the watch’s screen.
You can set a daily target – between 1,000 and 50,000 steps – while a small graph on the LCD handily shows your activity through the day, for on-wrist guilt tripping.
Sit around for too long and it can also issue a step reminder. Nice.
Casio.
Bluetooth connects the watch to Casio’s smartphone app, where activity can be logged and settings adjusted. The connection also provides automatic time correction, world-time settings and that all-important find-my-phone function.
There are some more conventional Casio functions, too: a stopwatch with lap and split timing and memory for up to 200 records, a countdown timer and five (!) daily alarms.
What you don’t get may be equally important.
For instance, there is no GPS, no heart-rate monitor and no bright glowy touchscreen.
This isn’t really trying to replace everything an Apple Watch can do. But if the bits you actually use are the time and a daily step count, it offers a much simpler/ affordable proposition.
Casio.
And there is no charging cable.
Casio says the replaceable CR2016 battery should last approximately two years.
That’s considerably less than the seven-year (!!) battery life of an F-91W, but rather longer than the interval between charges on most smartwatches.
The F-B100W is also remarkably small by modern fitness-watch standards. It measures just 8.8mm thick and weighs 26g, with Casio adding ventilation slots to the underside of the resin strap, for the very active of you put there.
It comes in black and a blue-green colourway, and is newly listed on the Casio website for £55.